


Our General

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy Is A Flawless Leader, Daisy Stanning, Dystopia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, anti Inhuman sentiments, mentions of Ace Peterson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6471244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is so different when she is with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our General

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



_She comes and she goes. She knows my name. When she is under the same roof we feel uplifted. Like there’s a strange energy going through the building, an electric current of some sort. Well, like the earth is moving faster, that’s more fitting for her. Like a General inspecting her troops, that’s a good way to put it. She comes with a handful of trusted soldiers, not all of the gifted like us. She’s different from the images on tv. She comes here to rest, we know - to the rests of her scattered team, to a lover who waits for her, to people who need to see her alive to believe it. Our greatest fear. That one of these days the international manhunt catches up with her and they lock her up. Or worse. She has a kill order on her name. We all do - it was implemented last month. Any means necessary when it comes to Inhumans. The government says it’s not a war. Daisy Johnson says “what else does it look like?”. Daisy Johnson says the government lies. She says that the Inhuman tradition also lies. It’s not a gift or curse. You can make it be either. Your choice. You don’t have to believe it’s something positive, you don’t have to want to be Inhuman, you can hate it. But don’t let them decide._

_“Don’t let me decide,” she adds._

_But we still wait for her. Our General comes and goes and she always leaves and she always comes back._

 

+

 

She always knows the day is over when Coulson helps her out of her heavy boots.

Out there days are never over, they bleed one into the next, and the nights are for running, the nights are the best time to act, it’s not for sleeping, for resting. Out there she sleeps when she can, more valuable than oxygen. But she doesn’t get to choose when, and she can’t always count on a bed like this one, and there’s no lover to breathe against the back of her neck through the night, there’s no such lullaby.

Out there she always keeps her boots on.

Here doesn’t mean uninterrupted sleep - so often she and Coulson have been woken by Joey or Mack or Mike, an emergency, they need you in the comms room, boss, and the boss bit is for both of them, finally indistinguishable. Here the blessing of the shared responsibility, and it feels almost as good as sleep. She can turn around and watch Coulson’s face before she makes a decision, knowing she can count on his opinion, knowing he won’t find her hesitation a weakness.

It is a weakness.

But Coulson keeps her secret.

She’s not the General in here, she doesn’t have to be sure of everything.

Coulson starts by slipping her out of her boots, always. Daisy knows she’s home when she smells the scent of cheap soap on the bedsheets, he always makes sure they are clean and cool to the touch when she visits.

Some nights all she does with him is sleep. She protests when he wraps her in blankets and kisses her forehead until she collapses on the pillow. They have such little precious time together, it seems a waste to spend it unconscious.

“We’ll have time when this is over,” he always says and it always sounds like he believes it’ll be over next week. “You have to rest now. You need the energy to lead your people tomorrow.”

She realizes that’s why she comes back here, why she needs to stay the night from time to time - _stock up on Phil_ she always calls it, looping her arms around his neck and kissing his hot face, gone red-ish from the compliment. So she can go on tomorrow.

Out there one day bleeds into the next and the night is for running.

In here she can tell it’s time to rest by the way Coulson slips his arm under her head and lets her use it as a pillow.

 

+

 

_People often ask how long I’ve known Daisy Johnson._

_I tell them the first time I saw her she didn’t have that name._

_And Phil Coulson?_

_Well, a couple of days later, when I almost blow up Union Station._

_What? It’s not like that gives people a worse impression than having Death in your name._

_Being part of the General’s personal guard, now that helps. People treat you a certain way around here._

_Was she always like this? they would ask me._

_Yes, she was always the weirdest person I was ever going to me in my life. And I’m a cyborg._

_That’s not the answer they were expecting, but that’s the one I got. Someone told me once that heroes are not heroes because of the powers they have, it’s what they do with them. Daisy Johnson is a girl who stole my ID to save my life. That’s what they need to know._

_Ace is old enough that not only does he encourage me to go out and help the fight, he’s getting ideas about going himself. Coming with me._

_“Can’t you talk to him?” I ask Daisy. The boy idolizes her, now that he’s old enough to understand she was the one to break into a Hydra facility and save him (and save me in the process). Since she’s become a symbol it doesn’t matter that Ace is not Inhuman he’s all Daisy This and Daisy That. When she comes back to base is like Christmas for the guy._

_“It probably wouldn’t do any good,” she shrugs._

_“Why?”_

_She smiles like I’m very dense._

_“When I was his age I wanted to fight the world just as much,” she says. “I would begin wanting to be on your side, Mike, but I’d probably end up encouraging him. Believe me, you don’t want me talking to him.”_

_He guesses she’s right._

_He considers asking Coulson for help but he’d probably end up giving Ace a SHIELD badge._

 

+

 

“Look at this drawing of you in a Captain America costume tearing the Anti Inhuman law,” Coulson says, nuzzling her neck and showing her the image on his phone (battered satellite phone, Daisy makes a mental note to get him a new one next time she comes back).

She keeps on undressing.

“Well, the artist should be careful, I don’t want to have to break anyone else out of prison for posting stuff like that,” she says.

“It’s a lot of work, I know,” Coulson sympathizes. “But these things give hope to people.”

“You know what would give my people hope? Me quaking the asses of all those jerks on Fox News,” she says.

Coulson smiles, sliding his mouth across her jaw.

Daisy knows he knows she doesn’t mean it, that she wouldn’t want to hurt people unless it’s strictly necessary to save lives - but it feels good to say it out loud, to be angry with someone. Out there she has to be unfeeling, reasonable, she has to lead an army. Soldiers would hesitate if they thought their general can be swayed by something as tiny as a news anchor calling her a “cancer at the heart of the country”. So that’s what Coulson is for, for the tiny things. For getting angry at the tv and complaining about not being able to change her underwear in two days and he’s for when she needs to tell someone she’s tired.

She uses him.

She loves him (she’s not sure she’s said it, she hopes he knows anyway), but she uses him.

She needs him.

He presses her against the mattress, smashing their mouths together.

“And this?” she asks.

“You know I like it when you get violent about Fox News.”

She needs him for this. Because he gives her a place to be violent and petty and tired and scared and _whole_. Not a symbol. Not the general of whatever resistance they are trying to hold. Just Daisy Johnson. Maybe even Skye. Sometimes just a body with no name, a bleeding breathing mechanism framed by Phil’s arms.

 

+

 

_My kid was scared of her at first. He was five when this all started and all he knew was that she made the world shake. And all the images of her on the tv._

_“Why is she always so angry?” Danny asked me._

_I didn’t have an answer. Only that his mom could explain if she were here._

_Danny was scared when she invited us to stay in headquarters. I thought it was only for Inhumans but when we arrived there was all sort of folks there._

_Danny didn’t like it here at first. He only knew that her mother being Inhuman was the reason we had lost her, the reason we had to leave our home to avoid ending up like every other family of an Inhuman “threat” as the news called people like my wife._

_“I hate Inhumans,” Danny said._

_“No, you don’t mean that.”_

_We had been there only a couple of days when Daisy Johnson sat down with him and she explained what it was like to be Inhuman, she told Danny that her mother wasn’t a monster, that she had a gift. She asked if there was something he liked about his mother’s powers; Danny remembered that time she cooled the Coke he was drinking when it went warm, and that time he got a fever and she would soothe him by putting her cold hand on his forehead. Daisy Johnson made my kid smile thinking about his mom again. Then she told him that she was going to get her back and put our family back together._

_“She is not scary,” Danny said afterwards. “She’s nice.”_

_I nodded along, eating the food the guy who runs this place had prepared._

_“She’s nice like mom,” Danny added._

 

+

 

One would think that the one hundred and twentieth time you are called a monster it would stop getting to you.

It doesn’t.

It never stops.

Terrorist. Threat. Freak. Those are bad. But somehow _monster_ is the one that ends up getting to her.

“I’m not a monster,” she whispers in the dark, teeth gritted, straddling Coulson between her legs.

“No, you’re not,” he says, trembling when her mouth touches his. It’s their call-and-response.

“I could tear you apart right now, you know,” she tells him, pinning his arms over his head, feeling the worn out material of his prosthetic under her fingers.

He is so ridiculously human,naked and trembling and aroused and loving under her body. Wonderfully fragile. There’s nothing hard about him - except sometimes his eyes, when he watches the news. Everything about her is hard these days. But he accepts that as well.

“I know,” he says, familiar with this game. “But you wouldn’t. That’s the thing. All that power, all that capacity for destruction and… you’re so tender, Daisy.”

The news call her “menace”, call her “aberration”. They say she’s powerful too, they admit that. A force of nature. The journalists would make puns if they weren’t so freaking scared of her. That almost feels like admiration.

“Monster” is the one that still stings.

No one ever calls her tender.

She loosens her grip on his arms, her body softly lowering onto his.

Coulson is sandpaper and brushing her body against his scratches the word _monster_ off her skin and leaves her raw again.

 

+

 

_When she stays she always stays with him._

_Once the work is done, once she’s made the rounds. She always ends up in his quarters, leaving before the sun rises._

_She is so different when she is with him. We only get glimpses of it - the way she holds on to his hand when he leads her to his bunk, trying to hide from curious glances - but we see the tender bits more clearly there. We even see her smile at him. Always from afar we can catch a moment that’s meant to be private. It’s a different smile. Not the smirk she uses when she tells us we are going to win this war. Nor is it the sad, sympathetic smile when we tell her how we miss home, or the things we’d do once the law let us do anything. No, this smile is not for us. It’s not even for Phil Coulson, the one who provokes it. It’s for herself._

 

+

 

“Talk business?”

“You’re all business,” she puts, looking at him upside down, hanging from the edge of the bed. She got a two-day break this time, and she and Coulson had spent the day in his room, eating, watching DVDs in one of her old banged up laptops, and painting each other’s toenails.

“Ace Perterson wants to join the perimeter guards,” he says. 

Daisy snorts. “Yeah, that’s what I need, the press finding out I employ child labor in my - how was it? - camps for the radicalization of Inhumans.”

Coulson wraps his hand under her neck and sits her up, making room for himself on the bed.

“That’s you, always radicalizing,” he jokes, kissing the top of her head, even though that’s basically what she spends her days doing while Coulson is stuck here working out ways of getting food for everybody.

“Plus he’s like five years old.”

“He’s not fi- Look, I agree with you. He just - he needs to feel useful. He think he owes you. Everybody does, but him more than anyone.”

She leans against the headboard, hugging her knees.

“I don’t like that,” she says. “I don’t like people feeling like they owe me.”

“I know,” he says, sitting in front of her. “But they do, they owe you so much.”

She rolls her eyes at him. Sometimes he says exactly what she doesn’t want to hear. She guesses it’s one of the reasons she comes back to him over and over (and she will always come back). Not that she needs any reason.

“Still. We should find Ace something to do here,” Coulson says.

“Yeah, it must be hard, with Mike gone so often.”

“And we’re all going a bit crazy stuck in here all day,” he adds with a sad smile, crawling between her knees.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy tells him, touching his cheek. “I know if you had never met me you’d never be here.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be here,” he admits, touching their noses together. “See? I owe you, too. I owe you so much.”

 

+

 

_When we met she complimented my nail polish. I liked drawing elaborate shapes._

_That shallow stuff should be the farthest thing from our minds, with how the world outside is going._

_She doesn’t have much time to hang out. She has her missions. When she’s here she spends all her day time in what we call the war room, working, figuring her next move, using the tech we have here. Surveillance and computer stuff is hard to come by if you are on the road all the time, finding Inhumans, helping them, getting people out of jail. Smaller stuff is even harder to come by._

_But one day she showed up with a handful of little nail polish bottles for me. “I tried to find apple green,” she said - that was the color I was wearing the day we met, the day she saved me from ending up tied to a slab in a Hydra lab. I didn’t know that, Daisy Johnson did. She pulled me away from a group of armed men and told me she liked my nail paint and she asked my name. Six months later she remembered the color. And she held up a bottle of the ugliest blue polish I had ever seen. “Gas station blue will have to do for now,” Daisy Johnson said. It was such an ugly color it made me cry._

 

+

 

“Look at my hair, it’s so gross,” she says, touching the split ends.

She has let it grow too long, too wild. She never has time to care of it properly. Funny because when she lived alone and without a permanent home, when she lived in cars and couches, she took a lot of pride in keeping her hair healthy and beautiful and fashionable. She didn’t have anything else so she might as well enjoy her appearance. It seemed so much like a luxury that it became vital to her sanity.

“Do you want me to?”

“Please.”

These small stuff he does - Daisy would say she is addicted. The way he would spin a nice meal out of whatever junk they have available. The way he would help her get out of her clothes and in the shower. The way he would take care of injuries she only half-healed when on the road. The way he would hold her, too, when she sleeps and all the bad shit comes back and fills her dreams. He takes care of her. That’s probably scandalous news for the tabloids, for the pundits who wonder if she needs to eat or sleep, how she doesn’t just look Inhuman but also _inhuman_. If they knew she gets a fifty-something ex-Director of SHIELD to wash and cut her hair.

She likes the energy surrounding her as he goes to work on her long messy locks. His vibrations, so focused, nothing else occupies his thoughts right now.

“Have you ever thought about going into professional hairdressing?” she asks, while the image in the mirror becomes gradually more _human_ , less feral and unkempt.

He presses a kiss to the back of her skull. Daisy likes how the feeling of dampness from her hair mixes with the warmth of Coulson’s mouth.

“Sorry, I only cut hair for super powerful and sexy superheroines.”

Does he know she feels bad when he makes her smile, she beds bad for smiling when so many of her people are still rounded up and marked like animals, when every person who helps them risks incarceration? She doesn’t tell him because in her selfishness she doesn’t want Coulson to stop - the strained little jokes, the silliness, the _lightness_ of it all, as if it wasn’t dark outside, as if their shoulders didn’t ache. It seems unfair to have this, to have gentle fingers threading through her wet hair to make sure it doesn’t tangle, to have laughter in her mouth

Love seems so much like a luxury these days that it becomes vital to her.

 

+

 

_Daisy Johnson invented the Inhuman Internet._

_That’s how we call it, anyway._

_I was never into chat rooms or that geeky stuff in high school. But after I changed and the police came to my house and after Daisy Johnson’s team took me and my family here I started appreciating a little communication with the outside world. It’s not like we can’t go out. If you are not a warrior you would be a nuisance out there, they’d have to protect you on top of all the people they save from the cops and from those other guys who want to open us open or control us. There are sports here too, the guy who runs the joint keeps a neat basketball court in one of the rooms at the back of the big ass building. It’s fun watching all the kids try to use their powers to cheat. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like it’s okay to have this thing, like it’s not terrible or a “mistake” like the news anchors say. Like it could be something fun. But that still leaves a lot of times during the day, and you want to talk to new people, get a feeling that you are not just locked up because everybody out there wants to end you._

_This stuff is like the Dark Internet, except it’s not bad, it’s just for Inhumans. It’s set up in a way that only Inhumans are given the instructions. When the news started “revealing” Daisy Johnson’s bad past as a hacker a lot of things became clear. Of course she’d try to make us talk to Inhumans all across the world. It makes a difference. She talked about that a bit that time she came by where I was hanging out with other college-age kids like me (most of us had been dropped by our schools even before the police came knocking). That she knew it can get stuffy in here. But that there are people out there who are rooting for us, willing to fight for us. That was the idea. To feel that someone is on our side. Because when you are up against an enemy that seems so much bigger than you feeling alone in the fight is the worst thing in the world. I think that’s what she said to us._

_I still think the internet is for geeks, though._

 

+

 

“Where did you get this?” he asks, holding out the suit.

“I went back to the Playground.”

“Daisy…”

It’s a familiarly exasperated voice. God she has missed it. It reminds her of simpler times. Not that she would ever change what they had them for what they have now. 

“It wasn’t guarded anymore and Mack and I thought there could be bits of valuable tech still inside.”

Coulson narrows his eyes at her. This is so nostalgic.

“You and Mack? You mean you did whatever the hell you wanted and Mack had no choice but to follow.”

“Hey, can we focus on what’s important? I brought you a present for your birthday,” she complains.

Coulson looks at the suit.

“Why this one? Why not any of the dark ones?” he asks.

Daisy shrugs, sitting on his bed.

“I like your light suits,” she says. Trying not to sound _too_ nostalgic. “You wore a light suit when you offered me a job. You wore a light suit when you went with me to say goodbye to my father.”

Now he looks at her with softer eyes.

“That’s very sentimental of you,” he comments.

She knows. 

That was the point. For him she gets to be sentimental. A useless emotion in these times. Unlike anger and fear she cannot win a war with it. It doesn’t serve a purpose. She should probably discard it. She doesn’t. She holds on. It feels good to be sentimental.

“Come on, put it on,” she says, giving him a friendly kick.

He disappears into the bathroom as Daisy makes herself comfortable. He probably wants to make an impression, instead of changing in front of her.

When he comes back he looks… good, but it’s not like it used to be. She was trying to recreate something, maybe. They had only become lovers in this time of war, inside this room. She wonders how it would have felt to start this before, when she wasn’t public enemy number one and he wasn’t a pariah and a traitor. When he was still her boss and she wore a lanyard around her neck. They could have fallen in love sooner and had time to enjoy this in the sunlight. She wonders if they ever will. Their past could be either a prologue or time tragically wasted. Depending on the ending.

“Do I look the same?” he asks, touching the fabric of the clothes with a sense of wonder. It had been old jeans and shirts for him for months - and doing the laundry with a hundred other people. No more tailored suits, not more collectables in glass cases, no more _sir_.

“Well, you look _older_ ,” she says and chuckles.

Coulson frowns and she stands up, pressing herself against his suited body in a conciliatory way.

“Do you miss it?” she asks.

“My suit?”

“No,” she says. “Being the Director of SHIELD instead of… cooking breakfast for twenty Inhuman kids every morning.”

“But I always wanted to have twenty kids to cook for…” he replies, grinning. Such a weird way for all his domestic dreams to come true.

Daisy slips her fingers along the length of his tie.

“I’m serious.”

“I miss…” he starts. “I miss you feeling safe. Being safe. Not having to hide. That’s what I miss from back then.”

She moves her hands up his chest, feeling the quality of the fabric of the suit under her fingers. It gives her the feeling of being in another period, even another world. Coulson leans over, sliding his mouth up her neck, the collar of his shirt brushing against her shoulder.

“I miss having the chance to take you out to dinner in a expensive restaurant,” he says, and she laughs with her throat against his lips.

“Well, on your next birthday then,” she suggests.

Coulson smiles like every time she gets optimistic like this. She tells her team, it’s good to make plans, think about what you’ll do _after_ , think about having a drink with friends, a meal with family. Her team has never heard her make plans for herself. She keeps those very close to her heart.

 

+

 

_The world has heard about she split the street in two, the crack on the pavement so wide that no one could cross over._

_The world didn’t hear that she did it for us, to save us from one of those squadrons in black suits._

_The news are talking about what will be the next step, how powerful - no, they say how dangerous - she could get. Is she strong enough to separate Los Angeles from the rest of the country with one wave of her hand? We don’t know. We know we are safe for tonight, we are not in some lab or government facility. Our pictures are not flashing on tv as the latest achievement in anti-Inhuman security. This is not a paradise or a safe haven but we are among friends, among other of our kind and people who swore to keep us safe and hidden even if it cost them their lives. There’s food and warmth. I personally don’t know if Daisy Johnson could tear continents apart. I know she would - to protect me._

 

+

 

She wishes he would ask more often. That he would ask “ _Why?_ ”, why is she here, why she chose him. She would tell him it’s not because she doesn’t have other option - though she almost literally doesn’t have other options. No one she trusts. No one she can behave like this with. No one who sees her and knows her like he does.

This started before the war. It’s something that has always been between them, ever since he picked her up from her van (god, _her van_ , that feels like a million years ago, not four). The way his eyes immediately cut through her bullshit, they way he intuitively knew who she was. Maybe even before she did. Before she dared imagine she could be this, all this.

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” he says.

“Then don’t say it,” Daisy tells him, pressing a kiss to his mouth to shut him up.

He untangles himself from her embrace for a moment.

“It’s not that I don’t love you spending every moment here with me.”

“But?”

“But you go out there more, talk to people. They would appreciate that. You can’t imagine how much.”

Her expression clouds, Coulson catches it immediately. She has never learned how to hide her heart when it comes to him.

“Talking to them… it’s hard,” she admits. “They expect me to… And I’m not…”

Coulson wraps his hands around her waist, pulling her to the center of the bed.

“But _you are_.”

“I’m really not,” she replies. “They think of Daisy Johnson and they have tis idea of what she is. Like she’s this badass General, this beacon of hope or… whatever. And I don’t know how to pretend I’m that all the time. I’m not that person.”

She lifts her hands to Coulson’s hair, feeling the crisp new cut. She looks at him, with the same overwhelming feeling of gratitude she always gets, for him, for _this_ , for not having to be _Daisy Johnson_ all the time.

He’s here when she gets tired of playing the General.

“You see everything I am,” she says, pressing her fingertips to his lips, opening his mouth slowly.

“ _They_ do, too,” Coulson says. “Trust me. They don’t love you because you can provoke earthquakes or wipe out the very people who are trying to kill them. They see the tender, strong core too. They see how kind and thoughtful you are. The way you memorize every name of every person you help. The way you don’t just tell them they are not weapons or monsters or mistakes. You prove that every day, just by existing. Believe me, they know it’s not your powers what makes you the most special person they’ll ever meet. I just wish…”

“What?”

He holds her face in his hands, brushing his thumbs against her cheek.

“I wish they’d see you smile more often, like I do,” he says, in a way that still makes her heart ache after all this time. “You’re not a secret I want to keep. You’re something I want to share.”

She wishes he would ask her why she is with him, why she always comes back.

This is why.

 

+

 

_The General stays for breakfast. A rare occurrence._

_She eats at our table. That’s not rare, it’s unheard of._

_Everybody stays quiet, losing our voices as we enter the mass and see her. We sit slowly, one by one, looking at each other like this is some kind of trick. Or is this a bad omen? Daisy Johnson eating with us. That can’t be good. It’s not normal._

_But the seconds go on and nothing not normal happens. The Peterson kid is helping out in the kitchen these days and he and Phil serve the food like they do every morning. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the food either. Scrambled eggs. A staple. And the hint of cilantro the cook favors._

_No one wants to be the first to dig in. Our General waits for Phil to sit by her side. We all just wait to see what happens. Then Daisy Johnson starts eating her breakfast. Devouring, that’s a more fitting word. Mouth open obscenely, big forkfuls of egg, like she’s starved. She probably is but… we stare, enthralled by her lack of finesse, by how human she looks, how ordinary._

_She lifts her gaze from her breakfast and stares back at us._

_“Yes, Daisy Johnson eats,” she jokes - the General jokes!. “Amazing, isn’t it? Almost like I’m a regular person or something.”_

_We all smile, some kind of weight lifted. Even Phil, with one hand around her back, attacking his plate as well._

_We all look down at our food and feel silly and start to eat too._

_Some of us laugh at the situation._

_If Daisy Johnson can joke in the middle of this we can too._

_If she can smile we can smile too._

_If she can love and be happy and think there’s a tomorrow._

_Then there must be a tomorrow._


End file.
